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This past year has been a busy one for the Star Wars universe. Aside from the release of the final film of the Skywalker saga, The Rise of Skywalker, there has also been the beginning of the first live-action series, The Mandalorian, released last fall on Disney+, as well as the conclusion of the beloved […]
What makes for a good modern American myth? Something where a quick Google search can’t dissuage its origins. Something that permeates the minds of the people inflicted and the communities that branch off of them. A thing that lingers and re-manifests, jostling memories of the first time it crept from the depths of nowhere and made itself known.
Perhaps the most widely known and talked about modern myth is that of the Mothman, a creature first documented in the late 1960s. Since then, the Mothman has been spotted countless times in the United States. Some say it’s a harbinger of cataclysmic events. Others say it’s an alien life form with connections to UFOs and Men in Black. Many thing it has a more practical explanation, is a hoax, or is the product of mass hysteria.
Whatever the case, the Mothman continues to pop up—in real life and pop culture—and is one of the more intriguing examples of modern American folklore. Here’s where the creature originated, its connection to a devastating small-town tragedy, and a possible explanation for why we can’t stop talking about him.
PBS
Where did the myth of the Mothman begin?
The first Mothman sightings occurred near the small town of Point Pleasant, West Virginia in 1966. On November 12 of that year, five men in the nearby town of Clendenin were digging a grave when they reported seeing a man-like shadowy figure fly over their heads from a nearby tree. Three days later on November 15, two young couples—Roger and Linda Scarberry and Steve and Mary Mallette—told police they were chased in their car by a black figure with a 10-foot wingspan and glowing red eyes. This also happened near Point Pleasant, and by a former World War II munitions site called “TNT Area.”
More and more reported sightings rolled in over the course of the next year. The first mention of him in a newspaper came in the Point Pleasant Register on November 16, 1966, with the headline: “Couples See Man-Sized Bird… Creature… Something.” Later an anonymous Ohio newspaper copy editor dubbed him “Moth Man,” likely to sound similar to Batman.
Many locals believed the Mothman lived in a vacant nuclear power plant on the outskirts of town, in an area once home to a top-secret government facility where nuclear weapons were tested. Was the Mothman some product of government tampering? A winged manifestation borne from weapons testing? Imaginations ran wild and created a legend.
Pexels Stock Art / Saturday Review Press
The Silver Bridge incident.
The sightings came to a halt in 1967, after a terrible tragedy occurred in Point Pleasant. The Silver Bridge—which carried U.S. Route 35 over the Ohio River and connected Point Pleasant to Gallipolis, Ohio—collapsed on December 15 under the weight of heavy rush hour traffic, due to the upcoming Christmas holiday. The accident killed 46 people; two of the bodies were never found.
Though the tragedy was later attributed to a faulty eyebar suspension chain and poor maintenance of the bridge, that didn’t stop the conspiracy theories. Writer John Keel, who had an interest in extraterrestrial life and other paranormal activity, wrote a book titled The Mothman Prophecies linking the bridge collapse with the Mothman sightings. Indeed, despite a few lingering reports in the days after the bridge fell, the Mothman sightings almost completely ceased after December 15.
Keel believed this was no coincidence. In his book, he surmised the Mothman sightings the Point Pleasant locals had were premonitions about the bridge collapse. Keel also linked the monster to UFOs and Men in Black. He was certainly fanciful with his “findings” but without him, the legacy of the Mothman might have stayed a tiny local legend. Instead, his book—published in 1975–brought renewed attention to the creature and sparked a surge in interest. The book became a 2002 movie starring Richard Gere and Laura Linney, fully bringing the story of the Mothman into the mainstream.
Wikimedia Commons
Further sightings.
The Mothman Prophecies brought a lot of attention to Point Pleasant. Tourism skyrocketed after the film’s release. The Annual Mothman Festival started up in 2002 and is said to draw about 10-to-12,000 guests per year. A 12-foot metallic statute of the creature—rendered by sculptor Bob Roach—was installed in the city in 2003 and is a popular attraction. In 2005, the town opened the Mothman Museum and Research Center. It would appear—like Roswell, New Mexico, site of an alleged UFO crashing—that the residents of Point Pleasant found a way to embrace their menace. And profit off of it.
But sightings didn’t only happen in West Virginia. In fact, alleged sightings of the Mothman have occurred all over the world. Some conspiracy theorists believe he was at Chernobyl before that disaster; or when the planes struck the World Trade Center buildings on 9/11. From 2011 to its peak in 2017, at least 55 people reported seeing the Mothman in Chicago. In 2020 a petition was created to replace confederate army statues with the Mothman.
The myth of the Mothman continues to grow, solidifying into legend. But does the Mothman actually exist, and if not, what’s the reason behind our fixation with this peculiar, shadowy creature?
WikiCommons
Possible explanations.
There are a number of possible explanations for the original Point Pleasant sightings. Those early reports frequently called the Mothman “bird-like,” with a focus on its red eyes. Some local scientists believed it to be nothing but a large heron. Dr. Robert L. Smith of West Virginia University had a more specific theory. He believed locals had seen a large Sandhill crane, a large bird with a 10-foot wingspan and red markings around its eye. The bird isn’t native to West Virginia, but some occasionally make their way into the state. In PBS’s mystery web series Storied, the host discovered that 28 Sandhill cranes were spotted in West Virginia from January 2017 to August 2019. Not a ton; enough to make it very possible that’s what the good folks in Point Pleasant saw all those years ago.
Others took that theory even further, speculating toxins from the nearby TNT area has mutated a Sandhill crane. This would account for its possible glowing appearance and large size.
Another bird with glowing red eye that could be the culprit? Owls. The night birds can have larger-than-expected wingspans for being so tiny and their eyes glow red when caught in the light. It’s possible a large owl spooked a few residents one night and a legend was borne around it.
Screen Gems
Is the the Mothman real or the result of mass hysteria?
The real culprit here is likely a little case of mass hysteria. That phenomena occurs when a cohesive group experiences a disturbance in the nervous system that causes an unconscious response. There are plenty of cases of even more bizarre mass hysteria recorded throughout history, but it’s often attributed to the growth of urban legends and folklore. Someone experiences an inexplicable event, and other people play into it. It’s a normal psychological reaction.
So yes, it’s possible that a big bird scared some people in West Virginia in the 1960s; and the whole freaked out town “created” the Mothman to explain what they couldn’t. But why are we still so obsessed with this thing? For the exact same reason. Because it’s a simple explanation for the shadowy figure we think we see in the periphery. Because we, as a people, love a good mystery and will away reasonable explanations in favor of fun hypothesizing. It’s why folklore continues in every tradition and culture. Because it’s entertaining.
Or maybe that’s what the Mothman wants us to think.
Featured Image: Screen Gems
The post What Is the Mothman And Why Are We So Obsessed? appeared first on Nerdist.
We’re living in a Star Trek renaissance. After the last show had been off the air for almost 15 years, and a bumpy attempt at a reboot of the theatrical franchise, we’re now leaving the neutral zone and going into uncharted space. To me, that means that it’s time we got a respectable Star Trek video game.
Star Trek ruled the 90s. They showed the world what crossover storytelling in a visual medium could look like, undoubtedly forming the blueprint to what we now see in so many properties today like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and even Star Wars to a certain extent. Back then, they always had at least two shows running concurrently in different parts of the galaxy, with unique characters and conflict. It was truly something to behold.
But since Star Trek was gone for so long, it had to adapt to the landscape that it helped to create if it was to survive. And we’re just now starting to see just how it’s doing that.
If you want a show that breaks the convention of what Star Trek is and explores some of the darker corners of Starfleet, watch Discovery. If you’re longing for nostalgia and you miss some of your favorite characters of old, watch Picard. If you want something more lighthearted, while still wearing the values of Star Trek on its sleeve, check out the new animated show Lower Decks. And if you want something that is going to do its best to both respect, and recontextualize the original series, watch the newly announced Strange New Worlds, featuring the Enterprise, Captain Pike, and a young Spock.
There’s truly something for everyone, which is really the only way to do it nowadays. But because of that, that’s why I think that it’s time we got a really good Star Trek game, something that could really let fans feel like they’re navigating the universe that has been a pop culture staple for the past 50 years.
There have honestly been Star Trek games before. You don’t get to be as big as this franchise without them. And honestly, I can’t speak to their validity. I’m a habitual gamer at best, and I don’t know all the intricacies about what makes a game good or bad. And I’m also a new Trekkie (Trekker??). So bare with me. But I’m talking about the type of game that brings new fans to the franchise, while reinforcing why the old fans have been around for as long as they have. We need a game that takes advantage of some of the newer aspects of gaming that didn’t exist on older consoles. And we need a game that’s not afraid to take risks.
I’m a very particular type of gamer. I like open world and non-linear ways of playing. That’s why I’ve been spending every waking hour for the past two weeks playing Ghost of Tsushima. My family hasn’t seen or heard from me, but I’m happy.
But as fun as open-world/sandbox games are for me, I’m not too sure that Star Trek is suited for that type of game.
While they’ve undoubtedly embraced more and more action over the years, the heart of any Star Trek show or movie has always been diplomacy and the burden of choice. So for any Star Trek game to truly succeed, those things would need to be at its core.
It’s not a franchise about shooting lasers at people. That happens, sure, but that’s not what makes it compelling. It’s about exploration, knowledge, and moral conflict. A game would not just need to feature all of these things but put them at the forefront.
So with that being said, in my opinion, there’s no better way to make a Star Trek game than taking a page from Telltale’s book and making an episodic, arc-based, decision heavy experience.
If you aren’t familiar with Telltale games, they’re essentially like what it’s like to actively control the outcomes of a television show you’re watching. It’s a choose your own adventure story, but on your Playstation or Xbox. There are instances where there might be combat sequences, but more often than not, you’re really just making decisions for your main character that has major ramifications on which way the narrative of the game goes, as well as what characters are your friends, your enemies, and even who lives or dies. You don’t have very long to make these decisions either, making it feel a lot more organic. There’s a lot of talking, and a lot of different choices that take you down very different paths. Those games have always been incredibly compelling for me, and I think they’re the perfect type of game that would foster a really fun Star Trek experience.
When you peel back the bright outlook on the future, the cool uniforms, and the powerful ships, Star Trek is truly about what it’s like to make tough decisions in dire situations.
Imagine a game where you can sit in the Captain’s chair and have to deal with choices of morality like whether you should break Starfleet’s Prime Directive (interfering with the development of an alien race) by saving a race of aliens that are less technologically advanced or letting them die. Or whether you should risk the safety of your ship and crew to save your First Officer who was on a covert mission to gain key intelligence from the Cardassians, but was ultimately found out, and now they’re set to be executed. That’s heavy stuff, but it would all be in your hands. And the drastic ripple effect that those decisions would have on the outcome of your game is what would make it fun, as well as really engaging.
Putting diplomacy at the player’s fingertips would yield some wild outcomes as well. You’d have to navigate how you interact with alien races that are not part of the Federation like the Romulans and Cardassians, while also keeping everyone who is part of the Federation happy. Don’t piss off the Klingons or they might rip up the Khitomer Accords, leave the Federation, and start a war. The way you interact with the equally advanced, yet morally opposed races could also affect your game in very different ways.
Amongst the bigger instances of conflict, you’d also have to manage relations and morale with your crew. Keeping everyone happy would have to be your top priority because if you don’t, they might not perform very well in high-stress situations. You might have a conversation with your chief of engineering, telling them that their work has been lacking because maybe it has been, but the game would give you a few different ways to address this problem. You could be blunt but encouraging, or cold and unyielding. One outcome might inspire your chief of engineering to motivate themselves to earn your respect and trust. And the other might make them buckle under the pressure. Then all of a sudden when your warp core starts to malfunction, they can’t perform their task and your ship is now stuck in deep space.
These are just a few of the bigger things that I think would make a story-driven, decision-based Star Trek game really fun, but the possibilities are literally limitless. All I hope is that someday something like this can actually be made. It’s about time we got a good Star Trek game. But we don’t need one just for the sake of needing a game. We need one that understands what Star Trek is at its core, so we can boldly go where no fan has gone before.
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The post It’s Time to Boldy Go Where No Fan Has Gone Before: Give Us Some Good Star Trek Games appeared first on Black Nerd Problems.